I learned what humility is the other day.
Humility is properly placing your confidence in Christ.
So simple. But so illusive.
I grew up learning to humble myself. I prayed prayers asking God to humble me. Meanwhile, I stumbled, fell and got scraped up being falsely humble, prideful, self conscious and non-confident.
I tried so hard but I got it so wrong.
I thought being humble meant making myself lower than other people. So I thought myself worse than others. Anytime I felt a shred of self assurance, I chased it away because I thought I was being prideful. I thought true humility meant feeling bad about myself.
But that’s not it at all.
It just means properly placing my confidence in Christ. Not in me. Not in my friends. Not in my family. Not in my talents, time and treasures. But in Christ.
And, since I’m in Christ, I’m confident because I trust His provision, guidance and protection. I often don’t have much faith in myself, but I for certain have a ton of faith in God and what He can accomplish.
And, like a loving Father should, He reminds me that He accomplishes things through me so I should have faith in myself just because He’s involved in what’s going on in me and with me.
That, my readers, is excellent.
Letters from Lindsay | A blog by a Lincoln, Nebraska, writer 
How do I get faith?
Well, if you read this, Johnny…you get faith by believing in and trusting Jesus Christ.
But how can I believe without faith? Isn’t faith the gas that belief needs in order to operate?
I think that everybody has faith in something, it’s just a matter of the object of their faith. All you need to have faith in Jesus is to focus your attention on Him, to learn about Him, and accept what He offers you.
So you think it’s about focus? Interesting.
Focus is part of it. Mhm. That an what the object of worship is. So the object of faith and worship. It should be God. But for many people it’s other things besides God. Such as money, sex, sports, TV, etc., etc.
That reminded me of something R. C. Sproul said:
“Humility in Scripture does not mean pretending to be worthless and refusing positions of responsibility, but knowing and keeping the place God as appointed for [you]. Being humble is a matter of accepting God’s arrangement, whether it means the high exposure of leadership (Moses was humble as a leader, Numbers 12:3), or the obscurity of being a servant.” (The Reformation Study Bible, page 1519)
And in Deuteronomy 8:2-3 the wilderness wanderings were said to have “humbled” the Israelites, so that they would learn not to live on bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
One other verse I’ll throw out there, “But we have this Treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” 2 Corinthians 4:7
I’m glad you blogged this =)
Way to bring this perspective of humility out.
good Words…I think you worded everything very well. Nicely done.
Lindsay, it’s like you read my mind. For the past couple of days, the subject of humility has been on my mind. I’ve often wondered what it really meant to humble yourself. People tell you to be humble and to humble yourself, but what does that really mean? What is humility? I actually just finished a convo with someone, where I thought about humility again, and asked the same question, what is humility? And you answered my question. Thank you for this blog Lindsay. As Shay said, you worded everything very well.
Well, I have taken quite a close look on your website and I must say that I find it extraordinarily interesting.
Thanks for sharing this…I’ve often not been able to fully wrap my mind around what humility really is. It really is so simple..